3000 Degrees

by Sean Flynn

  Funny how it worked out, Joe making a living building things, and still making a good buck at it even though it was only a side job. He started contracting because he couldn't get on the Worcester Fire Department. He'd always wanted to be a fireman, like his dad, Wild Bill McGuirk, and his big brother Billy. He took the damned test every chance he got since his senior year in high school. Scored pretty well, too, way up in the high nineties. But something always got in the way at hiring time. In the early eighties, it was affirmative action, the city trying to hire more minorities in a department dominated by white guys. Some years, the budget was too tight. Mostly, though, it was the military veterans who kept edging him out: a man who came out of the army moved to the top of the hiring list if he passed the test. So Joe would score a ninety-seven and lose out to a vet with a ninety-three.

  In the summer of 1995, after fifteen years of frustration, Joe realized he needed an act of God, or at least the state legislature, to make him a fireman. He talked to a friend, a city councillor named Wayne Griffin. Wayne liked Joe, had known his family forever. Joe built the deck on the back of Wayne's house, hammered his campaign signs together, stood on a corner holding one on Election Day. Wayne explained a home-rule petition to him, how the state could make a law that would give him preference on account of his father having been a fireman. It would have to pass the city council and the house of representatives and then the governor would have to sign it, but it could be done.

  A few days later, Joe told Linda, “I'm going to Boston. I'm going to see the governor.”

  “Cut the shit,” Linda said.

  “No, really. I'm going to see the governor. I gotta do something.”

  Joe drove to Boston, up to Beacon Hill, staked out Gov. William Weld. He caught up to him in an elevator. “Governor, my name is Joe McGuirk,” he said, just blurted out the words. “My father, Bill McGuirk, was a Worcester fireman and he died in the line of duty and I've been trying to get on the job for fifteen years, since 1980, I keep taking the test and getting good scores but I'm always a couple of points short because I don't get the preference from my dad having been on the job so I wanted to try a home-rule petition and what do you think?”

  Weld stood there for a moment, not saying anything. Then he grinned. “I like you,” he told Joe. “You get the bill on my desk and I'll sign it.”

  Wayne wrote it up, convinced the city council to pass it, sent it along to the statehouse. The house passed it and, in November 1995, Weld signed it. There it was, in black and white, Chapter 197 of the Acts and Resolutions of 1995. “An Act Relative to Civil Service Preference of Certain Members of the Family of William T. McGuirk for Appointment to the Fire Department of the City of Worcester.” His very own law. He had to wait almost two more years before the city hired him, at the beginning of September 1997, but at least he was on. Some of the other guys didn't like it, thought he'd pulled one string too many, got an unfair edge. “Don't worry,” he'd tell Wayne. “I'm winning them over. One by one, I'm winning them over.”

  He'd been riding Engine 3 out of the Grove Street station for two years. He liked the job, probably more than he thought he would. Hadn't seen much fire, though. A couple of house fires his rookie year, one big enough to draw a television cameraman who framed Joe in one of his shots. The guys called him “Hollywood Joe” for a while. Hardly anything burned after that, though, at least not on his shift. But at least he was a fireman now. Contracting was what he did in his spare time, same as plowing the streets after a snowstorm.

  He packed up his tools at eleven-thirty and steered his truck out of Charlton. Linda had gone to work that morning, called to the gym to teach an aerobics class for someone else who got sick, but she'd be home by the time Joe got there. Everett and Emily wouldn't be out of school until after two o'clock, which would give them a couple of hours alone. It was a standing date if Joe wasn't working the day shift, just the two of them, rolling around like teenagers.

  Linda felt a tingle when she heard Joe's truck in the driveway, then his work boots pounding up the steps. Joe was a big man, six feet tall and 220 pounds. He'd put on weight, forty pounds and almost all of it in his gut since the night she'd met him almost twenty years earlier. If he'd had the belly in 1980, when she was nineteen and he was eighteen, it would have taken him longer to squirrel through the crowd at Tammany Hall, a bar downtown. Linda had gone there with a friend. Joe saw her come through the door, smiled, worked his way over. He called her later that night, two-thirty in the morning, woke up her father. “Please let this be Linda Howe's number,” he said. Linda hung up on him, wondering what kind of nut calls a girl at that hour of the morning. She left the phone off the hook so it couldn't ring again until after breakfast, which is when Joe called again. He convinced Linda to go see The Rose with him. They saw each other every day after that until they were married in 1986.

  After all those years and all those pounds, Linda still thought he was sexy. He had that big Irish mug, bright eyes, and a wide smile. He'd flash it at her across a crowded room and Linda would feel a schoolgirl flush. Then there were the legs. Joe had marvelous legs, lean and strong like a dancer's. If anything, Linda was jealous of them, Joe's skinny thighs.

  Joe led her upstairs and into the bedroom. It was Linda's favorite time of the day, the two of them alone in the big pink house Joe had built for her. Minutes melted into hours, the afternoon slipping away, no one minding the time until they heard soft footsteps in the hallway, followed by a light knock on the door.

  “Mom? Are you in there?”

  Linda and Joe froze. She jerked her head toward the clock. It was after two. Everett was home from school a few minutes early.

  “Just a minute,” she said. She and Joe got out from under the sheets, fumbled for their clothes, Linda blushing and Joe laughing. “I'll be right out.” She stifled a giggle.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “I'll be right out,” she said again. She dressed quickly, fluffed the mane of chestnut curls that fell below her shoulders, gave Joe a kiss and a playful swat, and opened the door.

  Joe smiled to himself, satisfied, happy. All my dreams came true. He knew it was a cliché, even thought the phrasing was awkward every time he'd said it out loud to Linda. But it was the truth, especially the last two years. He had a beautiful wife, happy and healthy children, a roof that he'd put over their heads with his own two hands and food on the table he would cook with those same hands. And he was a fireman. An honest-to-God fireman, his father's son.

  He realized he was running late, wouldn't have time to stop by his lawyer's office and pick up the check for the two-family house. It was in their old neighborhood, a run-down wreck when he bought it at auction eleven years before. He had fixed it up and rented it out, then fixed it up again after it burned. “It's Everett's college fund,” he used to tell Linda. She'd never been crazy about him being a landlord—in fact, she'd never even seen the inside of the building. Now Joe had finally gotten tired of it, too. Dealing with the repairs had become a hassle, so he sold the building. Turned a nice profit, too, doubled his money in a decade. It would have been nice to get his hands on it today, but a few planned hours with Linda were nicer. The check would be there Monday.

  He puttered around the house for a while, then got ready for work. He was cooking supper for the guys that night, which meant making two trips out to the car to load the food he'd bought at BJ's Wholesale Club. Just before four-thirty, he told Linda he was leaving and that he'd call to say goodnight to the kids, just like he always did when he had an overnight tour. He said goodbye to Everett, who was in the basement with a friend, and then he called up the stairs. “Emily, I'm leaving.”

  She didn't answer.

  Joe waited a few seconds, pitched his voice up an octave.

  “'Bye, Daddy, I'll miss you.” Down to his normal tone. “I'll miss you, too, Emily. Thanks for the kiss.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” He heard her feet padding down the hallway, saw her bound down th
e stairs. Emily threw her arms around her father's neck, wrapped her legs around his waist, buried her face against his cheek. “'Bye, Daddy,” she said. “I'll miss you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Joe said. He kissed her back, kissed his wife again, and went out the door.

  Tom Spencer's cell phone trilled above the light hum of afternoon traffic, caught his attention a few blocks out of the grocery store parking lot. “Hello?”

  “Hi, it's me. I've got time for lunch. Can you make it?”

  Tom brightened. Kathy rarely had time to meet him in the afternoon, especially in the weeks before Christmas. She worked full time managing a medical office, though she only put in a half day on Fridays. Then she scooted out to Paxton, a sleepy town to the northwest, to a nursery where she twisted pine garlands and wrapped poinsettias and tended to the other plants. She went back Saturdays and Sundays, and would through the Christmas rush. They didn't need the money. Tom made a decent living as a lieutenant on Ladder 2, and a few more bucks on the side cleaning office buildings and setting up stages at the Worcester Centrum. That was a good gig. Eighteen dollars an hour for the bull work that kept him in shape, and more for working the lights from the catwalk, which he'd been learning to do the past few nights at the Holiday on Ice show. But Kathy liked plants.

  “Yeah, of course I can,” Tom said. “I'm just coming from the grocery now. I've got stuff for sandwiches, so I'll see you in a few minutes.”

  Tom did all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking. The finances he left to Kathy. He'd turn over his paychecks, all three of them, and say, “Take care of it.” Cooperstown every year, plus a week in France or England or on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Tom had never traveled when he was a boy. By the time he met Kathy, when he was a senior at St. Peter's, Tom had never spent a single night away from home. The first time he'd slept in a different bed was his freshman year at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell, fifty miles to the northeast, but even then he'd come home on weekends, work all night Friday and all day Saturday bagging groceries, go out with Kathy Saturday night, drive back to campus Sunday. He wanted his own three kids to grow up differently, see more of the world.

  Kathy found him in the kitchen, layering turkey breast onto whole wheat bread. Tom had been trying to eat healthier the past few years, ever since his cholesterol ticked up. He didn't cut back on the portions, though. Kathy would pack him a lunch when Tom worked the day shift: a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Tom would swallow that by ten o'clock, then have lunch with the rest of the guys at noon. He had a stunning appetite, especially for such a little fellow. “The Lilliputian,” some of the guys in the Grove Street station called him. He weighed 150 pounds dripping wet, still wore pants with the same thirty-one-inch waist he had when he took Kathy to see Jaws on their first date in 1976. But he was tough. Tom walked up mountains for fun, two thousand vertical feet to the top of Wachusett Mountain once a week or so, his English springer spaniel, Freckles, panting behind him, trying to keep up.

  Lunch with Kathy had put him in a particularly good mood. She would be out of town for the weekend, riding a bus to New York City with their daughter, Casey, and Kathy's best friend, Cheryl. An extra hour with her was a pleasant surprise.

  “So what do you want to see in New York?” he asked her.

  “I don't know. I've never been there.”

  Tom nodded, smiled, chewed his sandwich. Tom was a veteran of Manhattan. He made a pilgrimage to see the Metropolitan Opera every year. If he was lucky, he'd catch a performance of La Bohème, his favorite. Kathy never went with him because she hated opera, all those CDs Tom had properly alphabetized in a cabinet in the living room. “Tell you what,” he said. “I'll make you a walking tour, make sure you see everything. And I'll time it so you can go to mass at St. Patrick's. You can sit for an hour and it won't cost you anything. Try to sit down and have a cup of coffee in New York and you'll have to spend five bucks.”

  “Would you? That'd be great.”

  “Yeah, I'll leave a map on the table.”

  Kathy ate quickly, rushing to make her shift at the nursery. When she finished, Tom walked her to the door, kissed her goodbye. “Oh, hey,” he said brightly, “I think tonight's my last night.”

  “Really?” Kathy had heard that before, a few times during the past month, but Tom always went back to Ladder 2. He was trying to move to the fire-prevention unit, a regular day job inspecting houses and businesses and construction sites. She knew he was torn about it. Tom had been riding a fire truck for twenty years, been the boss—a lieutenant—for seven. He still got juiced by flames, by action. But firemen on the trucks worked a quirky schedule: two-day tours, one day off, two night shifts, three days off, a forty-two-hour week. The prevention job, on the other hand, would be the same four days every week, either Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday. He'd have all his weekends off, more time to spend with three kids who he'd realized lately were growing up much too fast. Patrick, the oldest, was seventeen, a senior in high school; in less than a year he'd be off at college.

  Not that he neglected them as it was. Tom was one of those fathers that every man imagines he will be before the rest of his life gets in the way. “The Ozzie Nelson of Grove Street,” some of the guys said. When Patrick and Daniel, his youngest, joined the Boy Scouts, so did Tom. He spent lazy summer nights in the backyard, staring up at the sky, teaching his kids how to pick out the constellations, and rainy afternoons in the basement building a miniature town around the HO-scale railroad tracks. If he dragged himself home from an overnight shift and Casey wanted to play tennis, Tom would grab his racket. “Get some rest, you've been working all night,” Kathy would tell him. He'd look at her, wide-eyed. “I would never use my job as an excuse not to do something with the kids,” he'd say. Working in prevention, he wouldn't have to worry about it.

  “Are you sure this time?” Kathy asked.

  “That's what they tell me,” Tom said. “Tonight's supposed to be my last night. I should be going to prevention on Monday.”

  Kathy grinned, pecked him on the cheek. “That's great. Enjoy your last night.”

  4

  PAUL BROTHERTON POKED AT THE PHONE, DIALED THE NUMBER for his wife's office. Denise answered on the second ring, which meant she was at her desk at the clinic, Family Health and Social Services. He could picture her sitting there, blond hair drawn back from her face, blue scrubs and white lab coat, both wrinkled by now even though she insisted on ironing every fresh set.

  “I'm going in,” Paul said. “What time you outta there?”

  Denise looked at the clock: ten minutes to five. “Pretty soon. Just gotta put some files away and shut down my computer.”

  “All right …”

  “Hey,” Denise interrupted. “What's the chance of you booking off tonight?”

  A pause. “Why?”

  “You can paint the bedroom.”

  “What are the chances? Absolutely none. I'm not booking off sick to paint a room.”

  Paul sounded irritated, cranky, which he was. He'd worked an overnight shift on Rescue 1 the night before, got home to Auburn, a bedroom town southwest of Worcester, in the morning, and had been running ever since. He ferried the oldest of their six sons to school at St. John's before driving to his second job, pounding nails for a contractor at a jobsite in Shrewsbury, on the east side of the city. He put in a couple hours of hard labor, then went back to Auburn to pick up Timothy, his nine-year-old, and shuttled him to a doctor's appointment downtown. Now he had to get back to the Central Street station for another overnight tour.

  “What's wrong with booking off?” Denise asked. “God, Paul, take a night off. We've got all these people coming over.”

  “You should've thought about that before you stripped the walls.”

  “Well, I didn't.”

  “Too late now. I'm still not calling in sick to paint a bedroom just because you invited a bunch of people over.…”

  “You know what?” Denise cut
him off again. “Go to work. I don't want you home tonight. Just go to work.”

  Paul let out a small laugh. “I'm going to.” Another short pause. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. I'll talk to you later.”

  “Yeah.” Paul started to hang up. “Oh, wait. It's pizza night.” Friday night was always pizza night—meatless, Catholic pizza night. Saturday night was franks and beans; and Sunday morning, if Paul wasn't working, was breakfast in bed for Denise. “There's a coupon and some money in your jewelry box.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  Paul was only mildly annoyed on the drive into Worcester. Paint a bedroom—what was she, insane? Paul never took a shift off, not unless there was an emergency, like if one of the boys got sick or something. The department was already short-staffed, sending out trucks with too few men to be effective, sometimes too few to even be safe. Christ, he'd been carping about that for years, almost since the day he got on the job in 1983. Denise used to tell him he should go on strike, march around with picket signs until the city hired more men. “Are you nuts?” he'd ask her every time she mentioned it. “I can't go on strike. I'm a fireman, for cryin’out loud. Who's gonna put out the fires?” The last thing Rescue 1 needed tonight, any night, was a goldbricker slopping satin gloss on his bedroom walls.

  He wasn't really angry, though. Paul hardly ever got mad at Denise. They hadn't had a real fight since … when was it? Four years ago was the last one he could remember, over that stupid corner cabinet in the living room. He still didn't understand why it had to go in a corner. But the bedroom could wait. No one coming over Sunday for Kim's baby shower would be spending much time in there anyway. And Kim wouldn't mind.